Carolina in the Civil War in Absalom, Absalom! (Location)

When Sutpen first arrives in Jefferson, it is clear that he is "no younger son sent out from some old quiet country like Virginia or Carolina" (11) - as elsewhere in Faulkner's fictions, for example, the first Sartoris and the first McCaslin in Yoknapatawpha are originally from "Carolina." In this context, "Carolina" (not specifically North or South Carolina) is associated with social prestige, an aristocratic pedigree. The novel does mention Charleston, South Carolina, several times, with the implication that it may be culturally superior even to Richmond, Virginia (188, 100). "Carolina" is also the place to which Henry and Bon, as part of the Confederate Army of the West, have retreated near the end of both the Civil War and the novel. The "gutted mansion of a ruined aristocrat" where, Bon tells Judith, he and his comrades found the imported stationery on which he's writing to her is probably in South Carolina, somewhere along the line of General Sherman's 'March to the Sea' (102). And "in Carolina," further on in the retreat and later on in the novel, is the "pine grove" where, amid "the gaunt and ragged men sitting or lying about" the "bivouac fires" (280), Sutpen tells his son Henry why Bon "must not marry" Judith (283).